April 25, 2007

Dear land of Guyana

I've been reminded of Guyana lately by dear Auntie Ellen moving back there (soon) and showed the kids a book from the library with lots of pictures of life there. They were really interested, since I could talk about it first-hand. At bedtime, when it was time for singing, I remembered that still know some Guyanese folk songs. We had a good time singing them, and now it is such a trip to hear these songs from way back in time being hummed or little snippets sung by Maya or Georgia, and to be asked to sing 'that song about auntie and her basket'. Here are the words to that one:

So I went to de maaket, ting a ling a ling
And me see auntie Mary, ting a ling a ling
And me take away she basket, ting a ling a ling
And she kick up a racket, ting a ling a ling
And de police come up, ting a ling a ling
And dey put me in de lock up, ting a ling a ling
And dey gi' me a six mon't, ting a ling a ling
And me feel like a dunce, ting a ling a ling
Ting a ling a ling, way-o, ting a ling a ling
Way ay o, ting a ling a ling
Way-o, ting a ling a ling
Way ay o, ting a ling a ling, ting a ling a ling

It's a call and response song. Great moral there, I suppose. They all love the word 'dunce' now. I wish I could find a link to someone singing the song because it's much more interesting sung than read. Oh well. Tell me if you hear of one! I really don't know what the song is called, which probably doesn't help either. But I'm pretty sure it isn't 'Ting a ling' because that's some very different Bing Crosby deal.

April 18, 2007

Allerton 2007

It's finally time for spring fieldtrips! Yeah! We had a lovely time at Allerton this week. Here we are in the Fu Dog Garden.

(Maya took this great picture of Teresa that captures well the fun she was having in the maze garden. We've always had trouble getting pictures of Teresa smiling because she smiles with her whole body so pictures of the phenomenon are generally blurry. Luckily I had it on the sports setting when I handed the camera to Maya. That first picture of Teresa smiling with the Fu dog was pretty lucky.)

I was so excited to find frittelaria growing among the daffodils. They are a special favorite of Billy and I because there was one growing at our first house. Plus, what other flower looks like a checkerboard? It's gotta be part lizard or something.

Inspecting pinecones

Oo! We also saw lots of fat tadpoles in the pond but they swam away too fast for me to take any pictures. We had an idyllic time and I felt so sneaky to get there before it's thick with mosquitoes. Hee hee.

April 09, 2007

snap! daddy

Yeah, so I haven't been doing that much springing with all this crappy weather. But after brooding about how cold I am and wondering if the poor frozen leaves on all the trees will just die and fall off and have to start over or if they'll just end up brown around the edges or what and other broody thoughts like that, I was saved by getting the CD I ordered and it being a lot of fun. Since I don't take the time to look for new music very often, I was lucky enough to hear a really great soundtrack in the movie the girls were watching one day, "The Wild Thornberrys". It was a pretty good cartoon movie, but I kept being shocked by the sounds coming out of that thing: new stuff from Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Youssou N'Dour with Sting, Dave Matthews and on and on. Wow! OK, new to me. I know it came out in 2002, but I have lots of catch up work to do music-wise. I also got the new-ish Paul Simon CD, "Surprise" and didn't like it much at first, but Georgia LOVES it so I'm hearing it a lot, and it's growing on me, though it's sappy in places.

Georgia and I both loved the song "Fathers and Daughters" that's on both those CDs so much that I made a little video with it of Billy and the girls. Yeah! Movie making makes cold weather irrelevant!